THEATER : Who Is This Robin Goodrin Nordli, Anyway? : The unflappable optimist, a believer in Southern California as ‘the land of opportunity’ for actors, stars in “You Can’t Take It With You” at SCR.

You’d have thought she would have an agent by now. She’s blond and beautiful and can play everything from Shakespeare to the piccolo. She’s starring as Alice in “You Can’t Take It With You” at South Coast Repertory.

Her name is Robin Goodrin Nordli, and her notices for the pivotal role in SCR’s revival of the classic 1936 Hart-Kaufman comedy are no less glowing than the radiant smile she offered the camera one evening last week, during a pre-show interview.

“I do all these mailings,” she said, “and I haven’t even gotten in the door. The agents look at your stuff. They look at your picture. They say, ‘We have your type.’ ” She paused, then added, “I think this is what happens: ‘Oh, another blond girl.’ ” And with a flick of her wrist she tossed a make-believe photo over her shoulder into a make-believe trash bin.

Straddling a chair on the SCR Mainstage in her cowboy boots, sweater and jeans, she couldn’t even seem to get the respect of the stage manager, who made no secret of wanting the actress and everyone else to clear the dimly lighted living-room set so the crew could prepare it for the evening’s performance.

But none of that fazed Nordli in the slightest. She appeared to be an unflappable optimist, if not a cockeyed one. A devout believer in Southern California as “the land of opportunity” for actors of all stripes, she moved to Los Angeles in November after nearly five years in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“There’s work down here,” she said, continuing the interview in a tiny office. “I got my union cards up there, but I found that a lot of the theaters where I wanted to work were passing me over because I hadn’t been down to L.A. They cast the large parts from L.A. and New York. If I was ever going to be considered for the roles I really want, I needed to move.”

Not that Nordli, an Illinois native in her late 20s, didn’t have a good run up north. She got her professional training at the American Conservatory Theatre, where she also appeared in various productions, and spent three seasons with the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival, where she was Isabella in “Measure for Measure,” Viola in “Twelfth Night” and Imogen in “Cymbeline.” She also played at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Joe Orton’s “What the Butler Saw.”

As recently as the mid-1980s, however, she was doing typical amateur fare in several San Diego theaters. Though she had starring roles in everything from musicals (“Camelot,” “The Fantasticks”) to dramas (“A Late Snow”), she knew something was missing from her performances.

“I would go to the Old Globe (Theatre) and I’d notice there was a difference between what they were doing and what I was doing. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time. I just felt they had a much solider base. They had more vocal control, a better range of acting choices. I figured out that I needed to get trained.”

In fact, despite having done some plays in high school and at the University of Tulsa (where she majored in music as a flutist), Nordli was a complete theatrical neophyte. She had never taken an acting class and knew virtually nothing about where to go for training.

“I was doing a backstage comedy, something really hideous,” she recalls of one San Diego production, “and somebody said Bill Ball is in the audience. I said, ‘Who’s Bill Ball?’ They said, ‘You don’t know? He’s the head of ACT.’ I said, ‘What’s ACT?’ And they explained about this place in San Francisco. So I got home, called up for a catalogue and just applied. I didn’t honestly know what I was doing.”

At the same time, Nordli heard about the University Resident Theatre Auditions, which provide the chance to apply simultaneously to many schools with a single tryout. Given her lack of audition experience, she sought help from a friend who specialized in melodrama, which turned out to be a mistake.

“I did Louisa from ‘The Fantasticks,’ and I did it REALLY BIG! I did Portia from ‘The Merchant of Venice,” and I did that REALLY BIG! I thought to myself, ‘Boy, I’m doing REALLY GOOD here. Then they mailed me the results.”

The evaluations were, to say the least, really awful . The adjudicators wrote such comments as “You need help!” and “What are you doing on the stage?” Nordli said. One provided a glimmer of hope: “You show potential, but you’re embarrassing yourself.”

Understandably, she was reduced to tears. “I knew I had this ACT audition coming up. I thought, ‘Should I slit my wrists or pray to get my money back?’ ”

Instead she sought comfort from a friend whose mother tried to improve Nordli’s mood by telling her she had just seen Charles Durning being interviewed on television by Johnny Carson and that Durning had said somebody once told him he was not good enough to sweep the stage, and look at what a success Durning is now.

“I asked, ‘Who’s Charles Durning?’ ” the actress recounted. “I thought, ‘Great. I can have a career like somebody I never heard of.’ I said, ‘What does Durning look like?’ And she said, ‘He’s this little round man.’ And I said, ‘Great. I can have the career of a little round man who I never heard of.’

“Anyway,” Nordli continued, “I drive to the ACT audition, which was held in Los Angeles, and I’m waiting in line in the hall, and this man walks up to me and asks me who I’m auditioning for. And I tell him. And he says, ‘What’s your name?’ And I tell him. And he says, ‘Good luck. I’m Charles Durning.’ ”

Nordli vows that the coincidence is not only true but that before she could say anything else “they called me into the audition.” She did so well that ACT accepted her without a qualm. “I carried Charles Durning’s picture in my wallet for the longest time. Someday I plan to write him and tell him.”

In the meantime, Nordli’s own picture accompanying a recent rave notice of “You Can’t Take It With You” in The Times piqued the interest of an executive at Universal. The studio sent her a movie script of “The Babe,” slated to star John Goodman as baseball great Babe Ruth.

“They want me to come in and read, probably for one of the Babe’s girlfriends. I’d better cut my hair to give it that ‘30s-era look. They probably don’t realize I wear a wig in the show.”

Even if she gets her hair bobbed, she’s pretty sure of what will happen: “I’ll walk into their office, and they’ll go, ‘Uh, I don’t think so.’ But, hey, it’s another chance to audition.”

It’s also another reason to ask, despite Nordli’s belief in Southern California’s infinite possibilities, will somebody please get this woman an agent?

“You Can’t Take It With You” continues through April 5 at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Coast Mesa. Curtain times: 8 p.m. Tuesdays to Fridays; 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Tickets $23 to $30. Information: (714) 957-4033.